Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/332

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320
RESURRECTION ROCK

being pursued. Moreover, Kincheloe believed in the theory that a hiding man was always safest in a large city; when he attempted to travel, then he was caught. So that night Kincheloe gave his hell of a party, gave it downtown with Billie close at his side; and the city was "wet", very wet indeed, then.

It was some time after two o'clock in the morning when Kincheloe and Billie started to drive "home." Kincheloe was driving his own car, which was a coupé purchased several days earlier with some of the money so readily obtained from Lucas Cullen, Junior. Kincheloe was drunk, and so was Billie. A light, fluffy snowstorm was blowing when Kincheloe skidded his car around a corner and on to Michigan Avenue and "stepped on the gas" for a race north. He had started driving with one arm about Billie; and he had boasted to a friend, as he shut the door, that any one who wanted him would have to travel some that night. So, very drunk and accompanied only by a drowsy girl and certain that officers of the law were after him, he drove north.

At half-past seven on that same morning, Lucas Cullen, Senior, was at breakfast and had finished his daily reading and comment upon Wilson's performance at Versailles, when his eyes roved the less prominent columns to pass over an item headed, "Open Draw Claims Another Victim." His mind was considerably occupied with speculations about Kincheloe whom he supposed to have started northwest last night and accordingly to be nearing Minneapolis. Lucas was thinking it was a good thing to have got the yellow canary out of the way, when his eye picked up the phrases, "Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China." What was that about? "In his pocket, as sole mark of identification,